Essential Las Vegas News, Tips, Deals and WTF.

Monthly Archives: February 2018

Housekeeping is an often-overlooked but critical part of any Las Vegas hotel visit. We asked an industry insider about these unsung employees, and learned some truly fascinating things about the folks who clean up after us during our Sin City escapades.

Here, then are 15 things even we didn’t know about housekeeping at Las Vegas hotels.

1. A Las Vegas hotel housekeeper cleans an average of just 16 rooms in a typical eight-hour shift. For comparison purposes: MGM Grand has 5,124 rooms.

2. Housekeepers are called “Guest Room Attendants” or GRAs for short.

Bonus fact: Housekeepers know your tissues need to be swapped out by the color of the tissues. When they turn color, the box is low.

3. Most Las Vegas casinos pay housekeepers $15-17 an hour.

4. Although their meals are free (in EDRs, or employee dining rooms), most housekeepers don’t eat during their shift for fear of not meeting their daily quota of “turned” rooms.

5. Our industry expert says hotel guests don’t tip like they used to, but most housekeepers get anywhere from $20-100 in gratuities during a typical shift. It’s estimated only about 40 percent of hotel guests leave a tip for housekeepers.

6. In time share hotels, housekeepers aren’t unionized and are paid a “piece rate,” a set rate for each room according to the room size.

7. Housekeeping is typically the largest and most costly department at a hotel.

Housekeepers (sorry, GRAs) call this a “courtesy fold.”

8. Major hotels have 24-hour housekeeping and rooms are cleaned non-stop to accommodate late check-outs and early morning check-ins.

9. While housekeepers do general cleaning tasks, there are “bio teams” that specialize in vomit, blood and other bodily fluids. Bio teams are specially trained, but things like suicides and people who die by natural causes are done by outside vendors. It happens more often than you think.

10. Sex toys and porn are often left behind in rooms. Most hotels have “Lost and Found” policies, and found items are held for 30 days. If the items aren’t claimed, they go to the finder, unless it’s a sensitive item like cell phones or laptops. It’s estimated about 2% of hotel rooms have lost items in them.

Toys for adults. Use your imagination.

11. When cash is left in a room, anything under $100-200 goes to the housekeeper who finds it. Anything more than that goes to a special fund. Cash found in public areas or the casino goes to the hotel.

12. Recreational marijuana became legal in Las Vegas on Jan. 1, 2017. This has led to a headache for housekeepers and hotels. Getting the odor of weed out of Las Vegas hotel rooms has become a huge challenge. It takes a lot of time, sprays and ionizers, and in Las Vegas, time is money.

Bro, take your hippie lettuce outside. And, no, we did not know “hippie lettuce” is slang for marijuana until three minutes ago.

13. Housekeepers know lots and lots of secrets. One of the more intriguing is that there are celebrities who visit Las Vegas frequently and are known for their tastes in, well, the scatalogical. Our expert says these celebrities tend to be generous tippers because of the mess they create.

14. Housekeeping room assignments are doled out by seniority, and some of the prime sections can have the same housekeeper for decades. If a housekeeper encounters a “Do Not Disturb” sign, she (they’re mostly female) has to keep coming back to the room until it’s cleaned. About seven percent of a hotel’s rooms aren’t cleaned on a given day because of “refusals” or “Do not disturb” signs. Housekeepers must hit their quota, and being re-assigned another room can be an ordeal. So, if you’ve ever thought, “Let’s give them a break, no service today,” you’re actually making life harder on the housekeeper, not easier.

15. Motorized housekeeping carts weigh about 500 pounds.

These tidbits about housekeeping helped give us a new appreciation for the hard-working folks who do this physically demanding job. Take time to thank the housekeeping staff at your Las Vegas hotel, and tips—two or three bucks each day works—are always welcome.

Despite a quarter million downloads under our belt, we’re still not sure you should listen to our podcast. Fair warning.

If you do, you’ll hear news and opinions and quite possibly things that will get us sued. The things we do for you.

In this episode, we share our experiences at three new downtown restaurants: Eureka on Fremont East (pictured below), Flock & Fowl at the Ogden and Good Pie at Pawn Plaza.

Eureka’s management informed us we couldn’t take photos inside the restaurant. Eureka’s management can suck it.

We round up all the latest scoop about Steve Wynn and his mind-boggling fall from grace in recent weeks, including news about what Wynn Resorts projects are likely to move forward (Wynn Paradise Park, but without a hotel) and which could be shelved.

This lowly podcast has all the skinny you need to stay in the loop about what’s opening when (The Drew Las Vegas), who’s building what (MSG Sphere) and what else is coming down the pike (upgrades to the Fremont Street Experience).

As a comedian, Marty Allen saw it all and did it all. Now, he’s yucking it up in the great beyond.

Allen, a longtime Las Vegas resident and frequent performer, has died at 95.

We bumped into Marty Allen often here in Vegas, as he stayed active until very recently. His distinctive eyes and hair made him impossible to miss.

Marty Allen used a custom cane fashioned from a baseball bat. Here, he attends an event on Fremont Street to honor veterans in Nov. 2015.

To many, Marty Allen was best-known as half of the comedy team of Allen & Rossi.

Which probably sounds like we’re speaking in tongues to millennials, but trust us, he was very popular.

Marty Allen’s career spanned decades, starting in the 1950s.

One of Marty Allen’s claims to fame was he appeared 44 times on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Allen later became a staple on game shows like “Password” and “Hollywood Squares.”

Most importantly, though, Marty Allen performed on the Las Vegas Strip on a regular basis for a good portion of his life. Here’s a look at some of his shtick.

We honestly have no idea why Marty Allen’s passing has struck such a nerve with us. Maybe it’s because he chose Las Vegas as his favorite place to live and work. Maybe it’s because of his mischievous comedic persona.

Maybe it’s because Marty Allen was one of the few remaining performers from an era when comedians took laughter seriously. He worked clean, and his comedy had heart.

As we like to say, Marty Allen drank deeply from the dribble glass of life, and we will not look upon his like again.

The abandoned Fontainebleau project has been given another shot at success, this time with the name The Drew Las Vegas.

Yes, The Drew.

We had the same reaction, but it will presumably have a casino, so we’ll cut them some slack.

Fontainebleau will now be named after the past tense of “draw.”

Developers say The Drew will open in 2020, a partnership between real estate firm Witkoff and Marriott International.

Construction was halted on Fontainebleau in 2009 due to the economic downturn, and because Las Vegas occasionally needs failures to make its successes all the more impressive. The building was about 70% complete when work stopped, and Fontainebleau has been a running gag ever since.

No, really, this is the last time we’ll share this.

As we were the first to report, Fontainebleau was sold in August 2017 for $600 million to Witkoff and another real estate firm, New Valley.

The resort is located across from Circus Circus, next to the former Riviera casino, currently a parking lot.

Yep, that former Riviera. The Drew Las Vegas will be at left.

On a somber note, The Drew Las Vegas appears to be named after Andrew Witkoff, the son of real estate mogul Steven Witkoff. Andrew “Drew” Witkoff died of an OxyContin overdose in 2011. Read more. Bit of a buzzkill there, not going to lie.

Moving on.

The Drew Las Vegas will have 4,000 rooms and 500,000 square feet of convention and meeting space.

Plans for The Drew also include entertainment, nightlife, retail and dining venues, including an aspirational 20 restaurant options.

The Drew will mark the debut of Marriott’s high-end “Edition” brand in Las Vegas, whatever that might be.

Marriott’s massive customer database, estimated at about 100 million members, is likely to be key to the resort’s success.

The Drew will be the tallest building in Las Vegas, excluding the Stratosphere.

Also involved in The Drew project will be John Unwin, who previously helped open the Cosmopolitan. Interestingly, Cosmopolitan is currently part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. We also don’t know what that means.

The Drew Las Vegas joins a number of major projects happening on the north end of the Las Vegas Strip, including Resorts World, All Net Resort and Arena, Wynn Paradise Park, the Sphere from Las Vegas Sands Corp., an expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center and others.

We’re excited to see The Drew Las Vegas become a thing! Having a powerhouse like Marriott onboard certainly doesn’t hurt its chances.

Sinna recently celebrated a birthday, and decided to invite some friends to join him in Las Vegas for the festivities.

Lots of people have done that. But Gabe Sinna isn’t everybody.

After months of planning, Sinna created an ingenious game for his friends to play, inspired by the hit travel competition on CBS, “The Amazing Race.” And his game has raised the bar for Las Vegas scavenger hunts forever.

Trust us, the word “amazing” isn’t used lightly here.

See, just about everyone has a friend who’s a planner. But Gabe Sinna is more than that. He’s a savant. He’s a genius. He’s a freak.

And we’re not just saying that because Sinna dove deeply into the recesses of this very Las Vegas blog for nuggets to inform his “Amazing Gabe” race.

Gabe and the better half of the teams competing in the “Amazing Gabe” race.

While Sinna orchestrated an entire Las Vegas trip for his friends, we tagged along on the part that featured downtown. Not only do we work downtown (in marketing at Fremont Street Experience), the area is home to some of our favorite places in Las Vegas.

Sinna did extensive research about downtown before creating his race, then built his “race” using elements of “The Amazing Race,” including “Detours” and “Roadblocks.” He even used artwork inspired by the show. Told you he’s a freak.

This is the photo caption where we don’t mention how much free time Gabe clearly has.

At the beginning of each leg of the race, Sinna distributed clues (“Route Info.”) and his friends, all couples, got to explore downtown in a fun, unique way.

It should be noted Sinna’s friends are also sort of freaks, as they made matching T-shirts with Sinna’s face on them for each team.

The “Amazing Gabe” race included a carefully-curated list of things to do downtown:

Take a photo with the gold nugget replica at Golden Nugget

Get a pic with a million bucks at Binion’s

Try a scorpion shot at Nacho Daddy

Visit Banger Brewing

Ride the SlotZilla zipline

Visit Golden Gate

Rub Buddha’s belly at The Cal

See the Berlin Wall at Main Street Station

Ride the Downtown Loop to the Gold & Silver Pawn shop

Take in the Neon Museum

Grab a dog at American Coney Island at The D

The downtown race culminated at Pizza Rock, of course. Did we not mention Sinna reads this blog?

Gabe Sinna’s friends are apparently fellow Las Vegas aficionados, because they navigated his clues with relative ease. (It was determined later the Internet may have made some of the clues too easy to solve. Thanks a lot, blogs!)

Everyone got to express their feelings about Communism at the Berlin Wall display inside the restroom at Main Street Station.

While we love Las Vegas a lot, we bow before the love Gabe Sinna clearly has for this town. Seriously. His name even has “sin” in it.

Thanks to Gabe for letting us tag along on several legs of the “Amazing Gabe” race! We were truly impressed with his knowledge of Vegas, as well as his organizational ability, as it’s well-known we are personally bereft of the planning gene.

We are not a heights person, but for some, winning prevails over woozy.

If you’ve done anything even remotely as creative as Gabe for a Las Vegas visit, we’d love to hear about it. We won’t hold our breath.

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